


Endothermic

by convolutedConcussion



Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: Anyway Sorry, Dolls POV, F/M, Mostly introspection, Some angst, The Author's Depression Is Showing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-24
Updated: 2017-06-24
Packaged: 2018-11-18 06:04:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11285214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/convolutedConcussion/pseuds/convolutedConcussion
Summary: Anonymous said:  TALK TO ME ABOUT THE WYNDOLLS tell me exactly what Dolls' half-lucid fantasies were about Wynonna coming to rescue him





	Endothermic

There’s a voice in the back of his mind that he _hates_ because it whispers that Wynonna’s gonna come save him.  It’s not some misplaced sense of pride—he _knows_ deep down she’s gonna try and he hates himself for wanting her to because she’s gonna get herself (or her sister, or Doc, or Haught…) goddamn _killed_ trying to do it.  As he stagnates in that cell, as Lucado gloats, that voice gets a little bit louder and louder and louder until it takes all he has not to scream that she _can’t_ —she’s smart, they all are, they’re inventive as hell, but there’s _no getting him outta this_.  Not with less than a day’s planning, and especially not after—

And he tries not to think about it, but then all he’s left with his Lucado, and the smell of bad chow mein, and the crumpled look on Wynonna’s face as he was hauled away.  (He tries to clear his mind, or focus on the pain, anything but that yearning, hopeful voice.)  It persists, though, even as he feels himself slipping, feels his skin crawl with something just underneath, slick with sweat and flushing hot and cold.  He tastes blood and acid, fights to stay conscious.  It’s hard to say if he wins that fight or not.  _Time doesn’t really exist, anyway_ , he thinks distantly, eyes drooping, falling closed.  It’s a godawful cycle.  Eyes close, pang, head jerks up, footsteps, eyes open, rinse, repeat.

He swipes for the phone, heart throbbing in his throat when he sees the screen, frightened in a way he hadn’t been until just now (that’d be the shock).  He knows it’s useless but he tries to explain—he knows why she hates him, gets it, he does, but he tries.

Doesn’t matter, never did.

Something scary and inhuman is welling in his chest.

When he hears a familiar voice, it’s not the one he was expecting, and things feel odd and out of order and all he can think for a long, long time while Doc Holliday does his damnedest to make the most of the dynamite he finally got his hands on—and for half a second Dolls is shocked out of the moment enough to wonder _who the hell gave Doc Holliday dynamite?_   But then she’s freaked enough she’s backed up to his _cage_ —and hell even the _thought_ sounds like a snarl—and he hears her plaintive apology and he’s got her and he could just keep squeezing, could just—

“Don’t kill her— _Dolls_ ,” he hears, sharp and gruff, and he feels her going limp.  “If you do, this’ll all be over.”

He lets her drop and demands, panting, “Wow, Doc Holliday lecturing me on ethics, huh?”  He stands as the door swings open, groaning with the effort of pushing to his feet, struggling to keep his voice normal.  “What a difference a year makes.”  The world lurches dangerously as he manages to say, “Don’t think I can make it the whole way though.”

Doc catches him.  Tells him he’s gotta, that if he doesn’t he’ll have two angry Earps after him, and Dolls knows it’s true enough.  Instead of asking what he wants to know, he gazes, glassy-eyed, at him and asks, “Where the hell’d you get all that dynamite?”  A pause, then a dig, “And what happened to your hat?”

And they go and Doc is holding more of Dolls’ weight than he is and it hurts, hurts, hurts, and there’s something tearing him from the inside out and wants _out_ , he feels it in his teeth and his fingernails—and Doc _kept_ some, God bless the man.  As he eyes the few drops left in the vial, he realizes he can’t go back with him—it’s dangerous, it’s a liability, he won’t help—he remembers the firefight at the homestead with a sick twist.  But he’s gotta—the drop stings, but it always sucks and he’ll live and hears himself and hears Doc but doesn’t register it—he grabs Doc by the tie because this is _important_ , dammit, she’s gotta know, she’s—

\--

It’s a waste of time and a dumbass damn risk, but he sees the necklace and snags it on his way out.  Running on fumes, feeling that thing that lives, has always lived—but no, that’s not right, it wasn’t always there, was it?  It’s inside him, part of him but not like lycanthropy, not a condition—it’s like a xenomorph, like a chestburster, coiled serpentine in his cells after being set there to incubate.  He feels it, restless, unshackled, and he knows he won’t be able to hold it off for long, but he has to—he needs to—just to see her, one last time.  It’s stupid, it’s risky, it’s illogical.

Illogical or not, he does it, half certain he’s gonna be shot as he watches Wynonna make the trek out from the house, and even from this distance he can almost see her anger and anguish in her posture and he really—he doesn’t _mean_ to step forward and let himself be seen, knows it’s _so, so stupid_ , but it’s a day for stupid, right?  And it’s worth it, it _is_ , to see her and be seen, even as his eyes prick with tears he doesn’t even _try_ to hide.  In that moment, for _just_ a moment, the thing in his chest isn’t a monster (or xenomorph or), but something familiar in an entirely different way and he smiles.

He has to _go_ , but that warm thing sits inside him deep into the woods, under the anxiety and the hummingbird-fast thrum of his heart and the screaming in his ears.

There’s a hunting cabin no one uses deep enough into the woods that there’s no snow on the ground.  It smells like mold and dust and neglect but it hides him from the wind whistling unbearably high notes through the trees.  Sweat-slick, shaking, weak, he somehow manages to catch himself before he collapses onto the dirty floor and instead drops onto a threadbare couch backed up against the wall with a groan or a growl.  Under the sharp pain in his gut, he almost can’t feel his flesh prickling, burning, shifting.

He thinks, _I’m gonna die in the middle of fucking nowhere._

He thinks, _I wonder what they’ll tell my mom_.

He thinks, _I wonder_ if _they’ll tell my mom_.

He thinks, _I should have fucking killed Lucado_.

Eventually, he sleeps.

\--

The first ones come when he’s still more skin than scales.  He hears their footfalls in the eerie quiet and he’s almost offended.  Honestly, they’re so easy he almost wants to find Lucado just to ask if she’s even _trying_.  The two after are a little more difficult—he limps away victorious but just barely, and he registers distantly that he popped a few stitches.  He’s aware of his injuries in the disconnected way he’s aware he’s losing pieces of himself.  It’s like being in a dream—his body moves independently, sluggish with cold—he fights and he eats and if he lives he resolves never to talk about _what_ he eats.  It’s too _cold_ , he misses the _desert_ —ghosts follow him, whisper his name. 

It’s never gone on this long.  It’s hard to tell what he looks like, but his teeth feel wrong, his skin is leather, fingers morphed into claws— _a monster_ , he hears ringing in his head.  And it’s bizarre, because underneath, buried and unable to _fucking do anything about it_ , he’s still in there—it might be the worst part.  He catalogues, he has conversations with people who aren’t there.  There are no grand epiphanies, just the steady, heavy knowledge that he’s no longer in control of himself.  His body kills another hitman, he feels the neck snap.

There’s this ongoing hallucination—maybe a daydream, an invention to distract himself from what he’s become—and he can almost hear what she’d say.  “I’ve had some benders,” he imagines, “But this really takes the cake.  I’ve _never_ been so fucked up I ate a rat.”

And it goes on and on—at turns scathing and silly, shifting easily from disgust to comfort.  Pathetically, he embraces it.  Who’s gonna know?

They stop coming for him. 

He doesn’t realize it for a long time.  He’s not paying attention, really.  He doesn’t know how long he’s been like this—doesn’t know if he’s been seen, doesn’t know where he is.  The ghosts are gone.  She’s here, but just barely.  He’s there, but he feels… far away.

It stops being so scary.  He tells her he’s sorry.  He tells her the stuff he never let himself say before.  He asks her to call his mom and lie about what happened.  He moves on.

It’s not until he sees another human face that it sinks in that he’s not.  The face is familiar, accompanied by hands held up in surrender, and he wants to scream, wants to shout, wants to tell him, _You can’t be here!_  All that comes out is a snarl, and he’s lunging and he can’t stop he can’t _stop_ he—

Something stings vaguely in the region of his left shoulder, and as everything goes dark he hears, “Real sorry about that.”

\--

A voice he doesn’t recognize says, “I can’t promise this won’t just kill him.”

_If only_ , he thinks ruefully through a throbbing migraine.

“Oh, I have faith,” Doc drawls in a voice Dolls has only heard once or twice, usually directed at an Earp.

His eyelids are heavy and itchy and it’s a fight to get them open.  The woman is vaguely familiar the way people just _are_ when you’re in a small town long enough.  And she’s holding one _hell_ of a needle.  He tries to demand, _“What the entire fuck?”_   What comes out is a low, discontented rumble.  He’s in what looks more like a meth lab than anything else—but with his arms bound over his head, he’s beginning to rethink that assumption.  She comes closer, eyeing him distrustfully, and says, “This is probably gonna suck real bad.”

His bark of a laugh is mangled and horrible.

A growl rips through him as the tip of the needle presses into his arm, and just as she pushes down on the plunger he hears thunderous footfalls and a shout of, “Hey, Doc?  Are you down here because technically these be business hours and I—what the pure shitting _hell?”_  

The last thing he sees before his vision whites out are her horrified eyes and Doc reaching for her.  He hears smashing glass then a rush and then he’s on fire holy _shit_ he’s on fire and he bites down hard to keep from howling as every inch of him, every cell, screams in agony.

Then, just like that, it’s over.  He’s wracked with shivers and everything still feels _wrong_ , but there’s something else, the shaky feeling after a fever breaks.  He realizes the only sound he can hear is his own heavy breathing.  When he opens his eyes again, Doc’s got an arm across Wynonna’s chest, but he seems to have forgotten he was holding her back—she just gapes at him and her expression shoots straight through him.  The woman he doesn’t know is staring at him in some strange mix of confusion and amazement.

“Holy shit—I think it worked—did it work?” she asks, turning to Doc.

“Well, I—”

“Reigns—hold—real quick, what the _fuck_?” Wynonna demands, knocking Doc’s arm away and rounding on him. 

He turns to the other woman and makes a face that pretty clearly says _what can you do?_ before saying, “I think we need a minute.”

Dolls huffs a barely audible, “Thanks,” even as she leaves them alone in what he now realizes is a basement. 

“You’ve been—like, just—just goddamn ghosting me, I thought you were _mad_ , I thought—” she makes a vague flapping gesture with her hand before looking back to Dolls, whose shoulders are starting to ache, eyes wide and wet.  “What the _fuck_ ,” she whispers, distantly bewildered.

“Um, guys?” Dolls rasps, jerking against the restraints at his wrists.  His voice isn’t quite normal yet—it’s not quite him, still more monster than man.

“Right,” Doc says, making short work of the leather straps holding him up.  Once freed, he stumbles a little, feels the steadying hand on his chest even as he watches Wynonna swipe angrily at her cheek. 

“So, I guess we’re keeping him?” she demands thickly.

**Author's Note:**

> I??? seriously misunderstood what the anon was asking for I think. But also............................................ wow, I just wanted to be sad and make no sense, I guess. This was self-indulgent in like the worst possible direction. Anyway swing by my [Tumblr](http://johnisntevendead.tumblr.com) where sometimes anons talk to me and all the time I beg for attention.


End file.
